State Highway Patrol end year stats

ZANESVILLE, Ohio- As the year draws to a close, the local State Highway Patrol post is reviewing crash statistics from the past year.

Lieutenant Matt Boyd with the Zanesville post said the number of fatal crashes are down from last year. Boyd said last year 17 people died in crashes between the coverage area of Coshocton and Muskingum County, and so far this year 15 people have died. Boyd credits the slight decline to Troopers stopping impaired drivers.

“Our enforcement efforts are actually down a little bit this year. We’re down about 5%. We were at about just short of 9,000 stops where we took enforcement out of those this year. However, our OVI impaired or impaired driver enforcement is up 25%. And what we’re seeing more of is the drug impaired drivers,” said Boyd. “We got a 100% increase in arrests on with people that are drug impaired only.”

Boyd said another factor in the decline is the enforcement of seat belts. Boyd said the post has given out over 2,000 citations this year. He said the lack of drivers wearing seat belts is a big problem.

“The problem that we still continue to see is people not wearing seatbelts. It tends to be a 50-60% number of people killed in crashes statewide that aren’t wearing seatbelts. And that’s about where our numbers are at.”

Lieutenant Boyd said the post also works to prevent crashes through educating the public. Boyd believes educating in conjunction with enforcement helps keeps the roads safe.

“We try and, you know, speak at schools and talk to kids about making good decisions and things like that. If we do that type of educational thing throughout the year and then we combine that with the enforcement that we need to take for the people that don’t listen. And we try to drive those numbers down.”

In addition to impaired driving and not wearing seat belts, Boyd said distracted driving is also a huge problem. He said if you need to send a text or make a call, it’s best to pull over where you can do it safely.